The Global Search for Education: Filmmaker Ava Bounds on the Types of Movies She Likes to Make

Posted By C. M. Rubin on Apr 12, 2023

This month, audiences can screen Ava Bounds’ Hello Frisco on the Planet Classroom Network. This film is curated by Planet Classroom.

Ava Bounds is a seventeen year old filmmaker from Yorkshire, UK, who has already achieved significant success in her career. She comes from a creative family and has talents in acting, music, visual arts, and dance. She has won awards for classical singing festivals and also composes music for piano. Ava is a trained Method actor and began her professional acting career in London at the age of twelve. She has won several awards for her first three short films, Players, Beth and Hello Frisco. Hello Frisco follows four teens who find a baby abandoned in a crumbling Victorian drain on a beautiful spring day. Things take a surreal turn as the friends embark on a race against time to save the baby’s precious life.

The Global Search for Education is pleased to welcome Ava Bounds.

Ava what was the inspiration behind the production of this film? What do you hope your audience will take away?

Often, I’ll just get a weird thought that pops into my head and I laugh to myself. I was listening to a recording of Hello Frisco on a Spotify playlist, and the baby — the potato — absurdist humor – just came to me. The girls in white dresses and then rags – stems from my love of Victorian England. I live in an old area of England and I’m very much influenced by my surroundings.

I would like to see the audience leave with a ‘what the heck was that?’ thought, with a smile in their eyes

As a director, do you typically indulge in themes of comedy, or was this new territory?

I often look at the world around me and see the bizarreness in almost everything. I’ve always been the same. My humor is more black than slapstick or jokey. Although I have tried to do straight drama – it often turns into a comedy — so yes, I suppose I do. My recent short, Whatever Happened to Molly Doyle’s Cow?, takes a look at death from an absurdist yet gentle point of view.

Do you latch onto any specific ideas or themes at the beginning of the writing process, or do they develop naturally in the pursuit of entertainment?

I generally begin with an image in my head, usually the ending of a film — then it won’t go away! I need to write a story around it.

In the future, what kinds of films do you want to produce?

I’d like to make films about stories that I’d like to tell – I doubt it will be a Marvel blockbuster. However, people probably thought that about Everything, Everywhere, All at Once – and that’s done pretty well.

Thanks Ava!